Perhaps it is time … to take a close, steady look at the phenomenon that is Roots: what lies at the bottom of its pandemic appeal, what magic does it proffer, and to whom? Three sorts of magic, subtly blended to serve as all things to most people, can be directly identified.

To begin with, the magic of the placebo. Roots purports to deal with diseases in the American body politic and the harsh medicine necessary for a cure. But it proves unspeakably mild and conciliatory in fact…. Haley has the accent of an adolescent catechist, and the imagination of an adolescent materialist. The vividness of physical slavery virtually exhausts his powers of response…. One thinks of André Schwarz-Bart and A Woman Named Solitude and wishes that Haley had half so well perceived the physique of slavery as a perverse sacrament, an outward sign of inward disgrace, imposed degradation...